This book by Miguel De La Torre offers a fascinating guide to the
history, beliefs, rituals, and culture of Santeria - a religious
tradition that, despite persecution, suppression, and its own
secretive nature, has close to a million adherents in the United
States alone. Santeria is a religion with Afro-Cuban roots, rising
out of the cultural clash between the Yoruba people of West Africa
and the Spanish Catholics who brought them to the Americas as
slaves. As a faith of the marginalized and persecuted, it gave
oppressed men and women strength and the will to survive. With the
exile of thousands of Cubans in the wake of Castro's revolution in
1959, Santeria came to the United States, where it is gradually
coming to be recognized as a legitimate faith tradition. Apart from
vague suspicions that Santeria's rituals include animal sacrifice
and notions that it is a "syncretistic" form of Catholicism, most
people in America's cultural and religious mainstream know very
little about this rich faith tradition - in fact, many have never
heard of it at all. De La Torre, who was reared in Santeria, sets
out in this book to provide a basic understanding of its inner
workings. He clearly explains the particular worldview, myths,
rituals, and practices of Santeria, and he discusses what role the
religion typically plays in the life of its practitioners as well
as the cultural influence it continues to exert in Latin American
communities today. In offering a balanced, informed survey of
Santeria from his unique "insider-outsider" perspective, De La
Torre also provides insight into how Christianity and Santeria can
enter into dialogue - a dialogue that will challenge Christians to
consider what this emerging faith tradition can teach them about
their own. Enhanced with illustrations, tables, and a glossary, De
La Torre's Santeria sheds light on a religion all too often
shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding.
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